Hello everyone,
Today, I’d like to share the first of inZOI’s three major challenges with you.
When we first designed inZOI, we built a wide and large city—but that scale came with problems. The distance between contents became too far, leaving many empty spaces. And when we tried to add new plots or shops, optimization issues appeared.
During Korea’s long holiday period, we made an interesting discovery while exploring solutions to this problem:
If we place only houses and buildings created using Build Mode, the performance remains stable and smooth.
So, we created a small town made purely with Build Mode, temporarily named “Canvastown.”
This is the small town I’ve attached as a reference file.
Today, I’d like to discuss the results with you.
What do you think about offering towns like “Canvastown” as an optional feature in inZOI?
Advantages of “Canvastown”
-
Keeps the open-world structure intact while allowing new buildings and shops to be added.
-
Even with around 40 plots, optimization remains excellent.
-
Shorter distances between lots make it easy to notice neighbors and nearby shops naturally.
-
Players can decorate the entire town and share it through Canvas.
-
The compact layout means less travel stress and no delays like waiting at traffic lights.
-
Because Zois appear frequently in a small space, the town feels more alive and dynamic.
-
Multiple small towns could be connected with short loading times in the future.
Limitations of “Canvastown”
-
Its current size is about 1/8 of Dowon, so it’s relatively small.
-
Since it’s built only with the building system, natural visual expression has its limits.
-
There’s limited space for vehicle content.
Should we make this town larger, or do you feel this direction is different from the inZOI experience you expect?
We’re still in the early stages, so your feedback would be very valuable.
Now, let me share another idea where I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Over the past month, I’ve read and organized all your feedback. We’ve already improved many of the issues you pointed out, but there’s one recurring topic that we still need to tackle:
“A clear core gameplay loop — with purpose, rewards, and repeatable progression.”
To address this, we’re planning a new feature called Fate Engine (tentative name).
It’s a system that randomly generates an entire life setup for your character.
Nothing too grand—just a way to give more purpose and challenge to the inZOI experience.
When you press the “Fate Engine” random button, the world settings will shuffle completely.
You might suddenly wake up as the youngest son of a billionaire family, or find yourself in a haunted house where your smiling family insists, “Everything’s fine here~.”
Or maybe you’ll start as the head of a poor family with ten children.
By living through these randomly assigned lives, we believe players can experience new kinds of goals and challenges.
I personally think this genre shines when it offers varied systems and layered experiences, but even reusing existing features within new life goals could make gameplay engaging in its own way.
It’s about experiencing life through trials and hardships, one story at a time.
If you have better ideas for goal-oriented gameplay or for improving the Fate Engine, I’d love to read your passionate feedback again this week.
Finally, before the year ends, I’ll introduce the remaining two challenges of inZOI, so please stay tuned.
Thank you.
– K.jun
Hello everyone,
This week, I shared some information about “Canvas Town” and the “Fate Engine,” and many of you provided a wide range of feedback and creative ideas.
Your thoughts on these two systems — a small, customizable town concept and a fate-based story generation system — have truly inspired me.
There were plenty of pros and cons discussed, along with thoughtful improvement suggestions.
For now, both features are being planned as optional systems that coexist with the existing content, rather than replacing it.
These ideas are still in an early phase, and your feedback helps determine whether we’ll move forward with full-scale development.
inZOI still has many fundamentals to refine and improve, and we’re continuing to explore technically challenging areas through study and experimentation.
Canvas Town Feedback
As the name suggests, Canvas Town envisions a small-scale, fully customizable town where players can use build-mode tools to create and share their own unique spaces.
Currently, the proposed size is about one-eighth of Dowon, mainly to ensure smooth performance on lower-end PCs.
In our tests, even with around 80 lots, the town ran more efficiently than the main city.
Of course, inZOI still has performance challenges, and we’re constantly working on optimization from a development standpoint.
Here are some of the most common and interesting points you shared:
The most frequent feedback was that the town felt too small. Many of you suggested either expanding the scale or connecting multiple Canvas Towns to form a larger city.
I completely agree. Our plan — if we proceed — is to link multiple towns together with minimal loading screens. It won’t be a fully open world, but we’ll keep testing larger areas to see how far we can push performance.
Many requested diverse architectural styles and environments — forests, mountains, farms, European villages, and so on — to allow for more personalized creations.
The team is already developing a variety of assets, including European and Korean traditional architecture, and we’re working on terrain and underground editing tools planned for next year.
A common suggestion was that Canvas Town should be offered as an optional location alongside the existing city, without sacrificing the city’s size or openness. I completely agree — that’s the direction we’re planning.
There was also great enthusiasm for player-built community lots — shopping malls, hospitals, schools, parks, and more — enabling community creators to fully express their creativity.
Some players suggested small rural towns, suburbs, farms, or even occult-themed villages — truly imaginative ideas that show the community’s creativity knows no limits.
One of my favorite ideas was allowing lots to cover the entire town area, giving even greater creative freedom.
Others proposed connecting multiple towns via roads or bridges to minimize loading screens — such thoughtful feedback that shows deep consideration for the development process. Thank you sincerely for that. 
Fate Engine Feedback
The Fate Engine is designed to assign your Zois unique fates and challenges, either randomly or by choice, to bring more structure and purpose to gameplay.
It was inspired by movie-like moments such as “One day I woke up, and something completely unexpected had happened in my home.”
I was encouraged by those who said, “Freeform storytelling is great, but sometimes structured goals and challenges give stronger motivation.”
I shared this idea early because I know how difficult it can be to balance structure in a sandbox-style game.
Many of you emphasized that the system should remain optional, as some prefer the freedom of open-ended play. I completely agree — I’m also a player who enjoys freeform gameplay.
There were several exciting ideas about fate-based quests, challenges, and rewards (like traits, items, or achievements), as well as AI-driven story progression.
Some even suggested letting players edit or select their own fates — an idea I personally find very intriguing.
Others pointed out the risk of the system feeling too repetitive or simplistic, and highlighted the importance of integrating it well with existing gameplay.
That’s absolutely something we’ll keep in mind if we proceed with development.
Technical & Optimization Feedback
We also received a lot of feedback about performance improvements, engine updates, save file management, mod support, UI improvements, and better animation and physics details — all invaluable suggestions that will guide our next steps.
Thank you so much for all your thoughts and ideas.
I can see clearly that players want inZOI to offer a gameplay loop where Zois’ goals, challenges, relationships, and career growth lead to clear rewards and a sense of accomplishment.
Our goal is to develop Canvas Town and the Fate Engine into meaningful systems that expand inZOI’s creativity and storytelling potential —
while still preserving the freedom and openness of the main city, giving players more choice and deeper gameplay.
We don’t have much new to show yet as we prepare for the December update,
but I’ll gather the recent progress and share an update this Friday.
See you then.
– K.jun